Decision Making & Group Dynamics

• These study notes cover the key concepts in decision-making, group dynamics, and potential biases that can influence outcomes.

Decision-Making Process

• Decision-making involves a sequence of activities to form convictions.
• The ODDI model outlines steps: orientation, discussion, decision, and implementation, though not always in strict sequence.

Orientation

• Involves reviewing objectives and organizing procedures.
• Goal clarification: setting attainable goals, reviewing the group's mission and evaluation criteria.
• Goal-path clarification: defining actions, tasks, roles, and milestones.
• Parkinson's Law: work expands to fill the time available.
• Law of triviality: Time spent on an issues relates inversely to its importance.

Dislike for Planning

• Groups may skip planning despite its benefits.
• This dislike stems from applying past methods, even if unsuitable.
• Planning fallacy: underestimating task completion time due to optimism.

Discussion

• It involves information exchange within a group for a shared purpose.
• Discussion is the "heart" of decision-making; decisions without it often fail.
• Collective information processing model: people seek and process relevant information in group discussions.
• Information processing is most intense with questions, alternatives, and dialogue.
• Interpersonal elements like support and commitment are present.
• Collective induction problems: tasks needing hypothesis generation and testing.
• Error checking: Members check the validity of ideas and information.
• Collective memory: A group's pooled memories, including individual memories, shared mental models, and transactive memory system.
• Transactive memory system: Members communicate information to each other.
• More information is remembered than people remember individually when in a group.
• Cross-cueing enhances recall. Misleading cues inhibit memory.
• Skill, motivation, and practice are required for discussion, which most groups do not possess.
• Information is best in memory if it is deeply ruminated or if there are visual cues.

Difficulty in Discussion

• Unorganized information is forgotten.
• The communicator may not be able to effectively deliver or express their message well.
• Lack of communication skills, interruptions, or side tracked conversations inhibit full and valuable discussoin.

Decision

• The social decision scheme combines rules and procedures to select an alternative.

Averaging

• A decision is reached by combining preferences computationally.
• If averaging occurs without discussion, the benefits of discussion are lost. The averaging procedure will yield incorrect results.

Voting Procedures

• Majority-rules scheme: an alternative needs support by the majority to be chosen.
• Two-thirds majority scheme: an alternative needs support by ⅔ of the group.
• Borda count: ranking method that attributes more points to highly ranked choices.
• Veto scheme: individuals can rule against decisions.
• Plurality method: the alternative favored by many is selected; easy but can alienate members.

Consensus

• All members must agree, which takes time but increases commitment.

Delegation

• The leader makes the decision in an authority scheme.
• Delegation can occur to a subgroup (oligarchy scheme) or an outside expert.

Implementation

• After a decision, it must be implemented.
• Evaluations assess the decision's quality and performance.

Social Justice: Fairness

• Distributive justice: the perceived fairness of resource allocation.
• Procedural justice: the way you went about making the rules.
• Voice effect: the belief that your voice matters during decision making.
• Evaluation of implemented alternative: a must so there is learning and improvement.

Decisional Biases

• Groups can outperform individuals, but biases can amplify.

Judgmental Biases

• Sins of commission: misuse of information.
• Belief perseverance: reliance on inaccurate information.
• Sunk cost bias: sticking with a course of action once invested.
• Extra-evidentiary bias: using information meant to be ignored.
• Hindsight bias: overestimating prior knowledge.
• Sin of omission: failing to seek or check information.
• Base rate bias: ignoring general tendencies.
• Fundamental attribution error: emphasizing personality.
• Confirmation bias: not seeking disconfirming information.
• Sin of imprecision: reliance on heuristics.
• Availability heuristic: basing decisions on readily available information.
• Conjunction bias: failing to see that two co-occurring events are less probable.
• Representative heuristics: over-relying on misleading aspects.

Restoration of Rationality

• Utilizing member diversity can mitigate biases.
• Dissenting members spark reconsideration in others.

Shared Information Bias

• Groups over-discuss shared information, neglecting unshared information.

Causes of Shared Information Bias

• Discussing shared information consensus faster.
• The group works under time pressure.
• Psychological needs lead to defending preferences and interpersonal needs to establishing reputation.

Avoiding Shared Information Bias

• Experienced members focus on hidden profiles.
• Increase time and diversity of opinions.
• Group decision support systems help share total information.

Group Polarization

• Group members incline towards an extreme after deliberation.

Two types of shifts

• Risky-shift effect: Groups lean towards riskier decisions.
• Cautious shift: Some groups become more cautious.

Causes of Group Polarization

• Social comparisons: use of others' positions as reference points.
• Persuasive arguments: Majority preferences lead to more supporting arguments.
• Social identity: identifying with a group's desired preference.

Consequences of Group Polarization

• Morally wrong choices can happen if the group has a moral bias, also unethical or deviating from the norm.
• A more supportive and positive group can lead to members' self-esteem to rise.

Groupthink

• Groupthink is a mode of thinking where groups deeply mesh with each other due to motivation to strive for unanimity that overrides their tendency to adequately appraise alternatives of action.

Symptoms of Groupthink

• Overestimation of the group, close mindedness, and pressures towards uniformity.
• The group ignores other potential alternatives and avoids any information that points to the limitation of their plan.

Causes of Groupthink

• Cohesiveness: Leads a group to have too high of a pressure, so it inhibits critical thinking in group members.
• Structural faults: Fault lines disrupt communication.
• Provocative situations: Situations that causes issues due to the high stake situation.

Preventing Groupthink

• Limit premature concurrence by witholding opinions at the beginning of sessions.
• Correcting misperceptions and bias: Accept critisims.
• Effective decision-making techniques: list alternatives.

Alternative Models

• Group-Centrism (Kruglanski): Groups maintain unity, rushing judgments.
• Ubiquity Model (Baron): Consensus leads to limited dissent.